A review of fire weather investigations in Australia

The Bureau of Meteorology commenced its attack on the problem of Australian fire weather forecasting in 1947 with the publication of Foley's Bushfire Bulletin. This publication first drew attention to the importance of the lapse rate in determining fire behaviour. Previously investigations into fire weather had been limited to part-time research by forestry departments in the various States, who are still doing useful work in this field. Recommendations from Fire Control Conferences led to the establishment in 1955 of a Fire Weather Service a s an integral part of the Bureau's functions and meteorologists were appointed in the various states to study fire weather problems. Attempts to predict fuel state from meteorological parameters were made but abandoned in favour of the establishment of fuel state reporting networks. Individual fires have been studied using the case history method and attempts made to relate the synoptic surface and upper air conditions with the behaviour of large forest fires. The problem of selecting suitable days for prescribed burning by Forestry has received a good deal of attention. Fire phenomena such a s whirlwinds have been examined and individual peculiar fire behaviour has been explained wherever possible and attempts made to see if the behaviour could have been forecast. Fire danger tables have been produced by the various state largely based on North American versions, and recently the Forestry and Timber Bureau has issued tables based on their own observed measurements made on test fires in various types of Eucalypt forest and grasslands. Evaluations of quantitive forecasts have been made to check whether forecasting methods are achieving the standards of accuracy required by fire control authorities.